


Moments

by buckybarrow



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Romance, Smut, moment to moment plot, situational plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 15:36:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6014353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybarrow/pseuds/buckybarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years, but of moments. You must experience each one before you can appreciate it." </p>
<p>A series of moments between Dorian and Ionas Trevelyan that develop over time to matter so much more - really just a steady "friends to lovers" romance with all the good stuff thrown in</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments

**Author's Note:**

> tags subject to updating as the story progresses!

Time and circumstance had taken Ionas to stranger and stranger places over the years, and this was certainly not his first time in the southern country. The Hinterlands was not all that different from the other bits of Ferelden he’d seen, if not a little more exciting due to the mage templar fighting, but Redcliffe certainly had an odd feeling to it. 

The lakeside village was more than just a little quaint, if he had to describe it. From what he’d learned of it’s spooky history and the skeletal remains of the old village across the bridge, he was glad too see it was long since back to normal. He’d had his share of walking corpses dallying in the Fallow Mire. 

Still, something definitely did not feel right about the way the citizens— the mages— all seemed to mill about, tittering hither and to, almost manic smiles plastered across their faces. He’d never seen so many in one place without Templar supervision, though a part of him was glad for it. He was growing tired of the mindless attacking of anything that so much as moved, which was namely himself out here. 

The lack of any real or discernible chaperone of any kind was mildly concerning, and to Ionas the mages seemed very much like what he imagined a town over taken by children suddenly absent of their parents would look like. As if the giddy and immediate excitement of sudden freedom had begun to ebb to the realization that they could not fend for themselves without a guardian was beginning to solidify. There was the noticeable tinge of oncoming panic amidst the masses, and it was being very poorly repressed. Ionas couldn’t help but share their sentiment. 

Especially considering their presumed host had no knowledge of extending the invitation in the first place, and the sudden presence of the Magister calling claim to the village without explanation of how that had come to be.

Positively eerie is what he’d call it. 

Though not nearly half as much as the note that the Magister's ailing son had slipped to him in feigning a dose of the vapors before scampering away on his father’s coat tails. 

Ionas warily unfolded it once the practically saccharine Alexiuses left the tavern with their newly conscripted rebel mages in tow. Naturally he had not been disappointed in just how ominous it turned out to be. 

 

_ Come to the Chantry, you are in danger _ ... it read in an overly ornate spidery scrawl. 

 

"Maker have mercy, do they think we are complete fools?" Cassandra said, a little more than annoyed by the notion. She stomped out of the inn, agitatedly adjusting the strap that hilted her sword to her hip, carrying on to mutter angrily to herself in Nevarran. 

Ionas was worldly, he could passably speak a great many languages besides the Trade Tongue and he wasn’t fluent in Nevarran, but he could pick out choice words here and there and enough get the gist of it. She was angry. She had every right to be, they’d walked blindly into Tevinter territory. Newly claimed or not they should have had some kind of warning, and Ionas couldn’t help but feel slightly responsible. She’d wanted to pursue Lord Seeker Lucius and the Templars to Therinfall Redoubt, but he had insisted they seek the mages. He’d had a hope, a fool’s hope that had gone unrealized, and now the Inquisition was wrapped up with the dealings of a Magister. 

Cullen was going to tear out his hair when he found out, if he didn’t throttle Ionas first. 

The rest that had accompanied the Herald to Redcliffe followed the Seeker at their own varying pace, as wary of getting in her way as lingering in such a place.

Bull may have been better at hiding his discomfort than Cassandra, but he had no love of Vints and Ionas caught the subtle change in his gravelly tenor. 

"Okay, that seems like a trap," The Iron Bull muttered, peering down at the stained, crinkled velum in Ionas's hands as he lumbered beside him on slower steps. "...But okay," 

Of course Ionas agreed, wholeheartedly so. 

"Feels like a trap," he shrugged, but the lingering curiosity and personal mission that had driven him to seek the rebel mages in the first place nagged at him. He found himself picking obsessively at it like a half healed scab and he couldn’t help himself. ”Still…might as well check it out while we’re here, don’t you think?” 

His answer came in a resounding groan. 

Sera wrinkled her nose at the suggestion and scoffed. "Right, coz we're just gonna do that, yeah? Follow marching orders from some creepy weirdo note? Good plan, Andraste suggest that one to you herself, Herald?“ 

“Yeah…I really don’t think that’s the best idea, Boss.” 

Ionas wanted to protest, but he was busy supressing a shudder at how wrong the title sounded coming from Bull, who up until very recently had been his boss. 

Cassandra turned sharply on her heel. “We should return to Haven and take this to the war table. The Inquisition absolutely cannot become enwrapped in the dealings of Tevinter.” She sliced the air with her hand for emphasis.

Ionas swallowed hard, he couldn’t rightly explain why he was so eager to scour Redcliffe, turn every stone, interview every single mage. He could hardly admit that the only reason they hadn’t gone to Theirinfall Redoubt was because he was still looking for the person whose trail had led him to the Temple of Sacred Ashes in the first place.

His voice wavered ever so slightly as he spoke. “Yeah… but even so, the Alexiuses—”

Sera cut him off in an instant. “Ugh! Who cares about some Magister and his stupid zombie sick boy brat? It’s shifty and we’re not doing it, yeah? Thanks but no thanks, think we’ll leave the mages be.”

Ionas couldn’t leave it be. He couldn’t give up hope that she was here, that somehow she knew he had been looking for her since he’d first received word of Ostwick’s Tower falling and that she had been the one to send the note.

The vellum crinkled in his hands and he clenched his teeth, thick dark brows coming together over his eyes as he played the scene over and over in his head. Fiona’s denying having ever invited them, Alexius’s sitting across the table from him, lips curled up over his teeth in a sinister smile, Felix stumbling and slipping him the parchment. Sera was right, it was shady. Of course it was shady, but he needed to be sure. 

“What if they really need help?” 

“Look, Herald, everyone needs help, but we need help too and I didn’t sign on thinking you were gonna go around with a bleedin’ heart offering hankies to anyone who so much as sneezes. We have bigger problems, and Vints outside of Tevinter lookin’ at mages isn’t one of them! Pull your balls outta your handbag and let’s go already.” 

Ionas worried his lower lip. He sighed and ran a hand through the thick mop of black curls atop his head.

“Don’t be a tit, Sera,” The Iron Bull growled.

Suddenly they were bickering like moody siblings.

“Don’t tell me not to be a tit. You’re one to talk, anyways, walking ‘round with your tits out for everyone to see. Look at me I’m a Metal Cow, I wear a bra over me udders.”

“It’s The Iron Bull—“ 

Luckily the Seeker had no patience for it to carry on much further than that. “Thats enough out of both of you.”

“Ooooh. Careful, Bessie, Seeker Stiffy Britches’ll turn Andraste’s hairy eyeball on us.” 

“What in the— what did you just call me?”

The air reverberated with the suppression of one of Bull’s hearty chuckles and Cassandra’s groan of disgust. 

Ionas was hardly listening as his three companions turned and started to make their way towards the edge of town. He lingered, half sulking over the comment Sera had made, half still picking at that scab. 

The Chantry was a little over a stone’s throw from where he stood, and in spite of his better judgement he couldn’t deny he was just a little too curious about whatever it was that apparently threatened him. Maybe he could go himself, take a quick peek just to sate his curiosity. Then again that was hardly a safe idea.

“Forget something, Boss?”

Bull’s big hand came clapping down on Ionas’s shoulder, wrenching him from his thoughts and giving him quite the scare. His stomach twisted at the title again. The herald had half a mind to protest, but he was getting that same look he’d received time and again while under the qunari’s command. The look he got when he was not invited to offer a retort. 

Ionas didn’t say anything, simply found himself looking back at the Chantry. Bull followed his gaze and made a heavy noise, half between a sigh and a groan.

“Can’t let it go, huh.”

Ionas hadn’t been aware of how he was clenching his teeth until he spoke. “You know me.”

“Yeah I do, and I know that curiosity is gonna get you killed someday.”

They met gazes momentarily, and it took Ionas longer than it should have to realize he wasn’t going to get permission from Bull, that Bull didn’t think he was asking. 

He was the Boss, as strange as it was to realize and Bull was waiting for marching orders.

Ionas took a steadying breath and one uneasy step towards the Chantry before Bull put two fingers to his lips and produced a shrill whistle. Summoning Cassandra and Sera he supposed, he still had his eyes fixed on the Chantry. His stomach was twisted up in knots for old feelings and anxieties he wouldn’t willingly let himself recognize. What if she was there? What if, like Fiona, she had no knowledge of the note itself or hardly any recollection of who he was? Ionas stuffed them down as best he could and straightened his shoulders, trying to stand a little taller. He didn’t want to go in, but he didn’t want to leave the note in case it was hers. It was like a vellum snatched from embers in his hand. Ionas imagined it burned him with brighter, hotter curiosity with every long legged step he took in the direction of the grand old building, though really not as old as he imagined with Redcliffe having been so recently rebuilt. 

Old shame battled his rabid curiosity. No other circumstances would see Ionas Trevelyan so willingly setting foot in a Chantry, but these were desperate times, and if she wasn’t there then he was positive that it meant she was no where, and he could hardly make himself face that reality. 

Cassandra and Sera followed after what could hardly be described as a discussion, and they found themselves climbing the knoll to Redcliffe's tired Chantry as discreetly as they could manage, grumbling the whole way. 

As was the natural progression of things, the situation made itself more interesting than was really welcome as Ionas reached out and tried the door and found it was locked. Of course it was locked, what kind of danger would he really be in if the place to which he’d been summoned had been open and available to the public?

“It’s locked,” he said aloud, as it had to be spoken to really make himself believe it.

Sera made a put out noise. “What’s a Chantry doing locking its doors? Thought they were supposed to be free an’ open to the public.” 

“Funny how they say that until the public turns out largely to be the people you make it your business to repress,” Ionas couldn’t help but saying, disgust roiled in the pit of his stomach.

“Lookit you, Herald, Mage’s Rights, yeah?” 

He ground his teeth and bit back a retort. “I have a vested interest…,” he mumbled. 

Cassandra could hardly seem to believe it and tried the door handle herself. “The Sisters must have closed their doors when the mages arrived.” 

“Especially with all the Templars gone, but the Magister’s arrival would be the final straw. At least that’s my bet,” Ionas said in a huff, glancing around to double check that they hadn’t drawn any unwanted attention. 

A part of him that was larger than he was willing to admit wanted to give up right then and there. Oh well, it would say, We tried! and turn right around and skip all the way back to Haven. He was already headed for an impending earful, no point in making it any worse by breaking into a Chantry. Not when at least two out of his three advisors were devout Andrastians. He could almost hear Cullen trying and failing to repress his shouting. — You did what?!

No, he told himself, You have to try. For her sake. 

Sera sucked at her teeth and went to rummaging in her bag. “So they lock the doors so no one can come in?” 

Ionas could practically feel Bull roll his eyes, an uneasy growl rumbling in his chest. “You want a bunch of Vints running around and getting into your shit?”

“Two’s hardly a bunch,” the elf muttered, 

The Seeker was ready with a second option before they could start bickering again, though Ionas was already turning the gears in his head looking for a solution to their predicament. He’d spied an open window high up near the roof of the Chantry and was busy trying to map the best route up to the window. So far he was considering climbing a very large tree.

“Perhaps there is a back door—”

“Why don’t we break it down and see who’s home?” Bull said immediately, leaving Cassandra floundering, hopping and reaching for the qunari’s axe as he hefted it up.

“You will do no such thing!” she squawked. 

Sera heaved a long suffering sigh and shouldered her way to the front of the pack. “Useless, honestly, what would you lot do without me? Make a hole, will you?” 

She squeezed between the two warriors still wrestling with the axe and moved to crouch in front of the door, peeking into the tiny keyhole. The flash of something shiny in her hands caught Ionas’s eye and he was drawn to look like the magpie he was. She’d unrolled a set of lock picks. From as far as he could tell they were made of steel, well worn, though obviously very effective at their job by the look of it. Whether Sera could say the same for herself, however, was another matter entirely. 

Nearly five minutes passed with her still fidgeting around inside the keyhole and she’d started to grumble irritably to herself.

Ionas bit the inside of his lip. “D’you need me to—”

“Shut it.” 

“You don’t need to kiss her and tell her she’s pretty,” Bull growled. “Stick it in and get her off already,” 

“Classy,” Ionas muttered.

“If you lot don’t shut your bleedin’ noise holes—bollocks! I almost had it!” 

Bull hefted his axe over one shoulder, turning to take lookout at she continued to fumble with the lock. Cassandra closed in beside him looking exceedingly dour, quietly suggesting twice more that they ought to go and look for the back door rather than break in. Ionas stood off to the side watching Sera work and fidgeting restlessly. He didn’t want to say anything, but it didn’t seem that she was very good at this. A wayward thought crossed his mind then. He’d known another elf in Antiva for a time who had also failed miserably at picking locks and caused the both of them quite a bit of trouble for it on several occasions. Ionas wondered briefly whether it was a cultural thing among elves, then quickly scolded himself for such a problematic thought. That was offensive thinking and Sera was doing fine, he was sure that it was simply a tricky lock. The Lay Sisters certainly didn’t want people to go breaking into Chantries so easily after all, so he stood chewing the inside of his lip to keep quiet while she tinkered away at it, the four of them looking the picture of inconspicuousness. 

Several long moments passed toying with the metal pieces before Bull decided to break the silence. 

"You know I heard that old broad out in the square earlier saying something about how this place used to be crawling with the undead." 

Ionas’s stomach turned at just the mention of them. Oh yes, he’d heard all about that. He’d even made a point to lengthen his stride and get out of earshot of the woman’s story as they’d passed her by. 

“Yes. That is true,” Cassandra said matter-of-factly. "It was a phenomenon under the influence of a blood mage and a demon corrupting--"

Sera cut her off with a yelp. "Wot, you mean it? Like, real shambl’ers like from out of the Mire?” 

Cassandra sighed. "Yes, they--"

Sera interrupted her again and Ionas bit his tongue to keep from urging her to focus on picking the lock and not the walking dead. He took a few steps away to try and distance to himself talk, but Ionas had always been an eavesdropper and he couldn’t help but pick up every single word. He scanned the distant crowds of mages, instinctively searching for a familiar face, all the while listening to them carry on a few moments longer before Sera’s description of a “shambl’er” a friend of a friend had once seen became too gruesome. Face melting right off the skull, eye popped out and hanging from the socket, moaning, hands reaching, bloody teeth gnashing— 

“Can we talk about something else?" Ionas asked, a little more than slightly put off by the topic of conversation. 

Sera snorted. “Why? Y’scared?” she teased. 

Word of the Herald’s phobia of the undead had traveled quickly once he’d spent any time in the Fallow Mire. Sera had taken the information and run gleefully for the hills and Ionas was already sick to death of the teasing and the pranks. 

“Impatient,” he corrected.

“Fear of the dead is not so uncommon,” Cassandra said gruffly, and though she may have meant well Ionas didn’t appreciate her input. 

Less talking, more lock-picking. He wanted to say, but picking a fight with Sera was the last thing they needed right then and there. They were, after all trying to be discreet. 

Sera sneered. “No, but from what I heard he's a squealy baby ‘fraid of everythin’,” 

“Am not!” He couldn’t help himself from reeling on her indignantly. 

“Are too and everyone and their mum knows it. Betcha that magister knows it too. Betcha real coin there’s a necromancer on the other side of this door waiting for you.”

Ionas groaned his frustration and was promptly done with the conversation. They would be there all day trying to pick this lock if he let this go on for much longer.

He wasn’t exactly set in his trajectory, but Ionas was always good at improvising, and that was quite enough skeleton talk for him for one day. He strung his bow over his shoulders and across his chest, took a running start, and a hop, skip, and a leap saw him scaling the wall with catlike expertise.

“And there he goes up the wall,” The Iron Bull sighed, 

“Why didn’t you just do that in the first place?” He heard Sera shout after him, but he ignored the lot of them.

He was quite content to focus on climbing and not falling and breaking his neck.

Buildings on the southern continent, Ionas had found, were generally much easier to scale than those found in Antiva, where Ionas had done much of his climbing in recent history. While Antivan architecture was often ornate enough to provide a great many arches, ridges, ledges and posts, pegs and windows and window gratings to cling to, the smooth exterior finish to the buildings did nothing for traction under boot heel and he’d had his fair share of falls due to just such a problem. Here in Ferelden, Ionas had found buildings styled similar to those back at home in Starkhaven, built of brick and old stone masonry, rough to the touch and easy to find a place to put his foot if he happened to slip, which he did only twice on his way up the side of the Chantry. 

He eased the window open a bit further and slipped in, weaving through the conveniently placed scaffolding along the wall to come to an easy landing just on the other side of the door. 

His footfalls echoed a little louder than he would have liked, and Ionas stood still and silent for a very long moment, listening for the rustle of movement from within. Nothing. It was dark and very obviously abandoned. Ionas couldn’t help the way his heart sank at that. No one had been there for near a week, that much was obvious, of course that left the question as to who had sent the note in the first place, where they were now, and whether this was a fool’s errand.

“Are you through?” Bull’s muffled tenor came through the thick mahogany door. 

“Through and through and in one piece,” the Herald reported, careful not to raise his voice. “Looks like no one’s home.” 

“Good, then you can open the door.” 

Ionas rolled his eyes and grumbled to himself, biting his tongue to keep from mouthing off. Oh, sure, after all that talk about the undead and teasing him for what was a completely rational fear, now they wanted to be his friend. So much for Sera’s ‘what would you do without me’. 

He took two steps before the air was electric with notes of magic. The anchor flared, lighting his palm and every torch in the room around him ablaze like a tree on First Day. Creepy. 

As if a locked and completely deserted Chantry weren’t already ominous enough, as if simply being in a Chantry didn’t set him on edge, the hair on the back of Ionas’s neck stood on end as he was struck with the feeling that something was very wrong here. It was only then that he recalled the note ending in warning.

“Right… danger,” he muttered.

“Felix? Is that you?” a voice hissed quietly from further in. 

Ionas stared very hard at the dark for a long moment, waiting for them to speak again. He couldn’t bring himself to call out, he knew better than to make his presence known to strangers in a strange place. He started forward, only half wondering if he’d walked right into a trap, kicking himself for getting bogged down in wistful thinking and not considering it a very real possibility in the first place. In the distance, a silhouetted figure slipped from behind one of the large stone pillars. Ionas hesitated, and then he felt it; the air was too still, tasted acidic, there was a complete and total absence of sound. 

“Oh, shit!” 

Ionas brought his hands up to shield his eyes when the anchor flared again. The air went both thin and heavy at once and the sound of wind escaping a vacuum hammered against his eardrums, threatening to burst them. He felt the atmosphere straining and struggling as the very air trembled before his eyes in the attempt to stay whole, wavering like the horizon on a blistering summer’s day before it was unceremoniously ripped open in a clap of thunder and a flash of blinding green light.

Ionas cried out as he was knocked back, gasping as if it had been his own body torn, and then he saw that the Chantry was not deserted. It was not the demons erupting from the floor and spilling from the rift that had caught his eye as he scrambled to his feet, but the figure that had darted from the shadows as he advanced. A mage but not the one he’d been looking for. This was a man clad in white robes and spinning a staff expertly about his body as if it were a halberd as he danced among the horde.

A single burst of fire leapt from the man’s outstretched palm as Ionas reached for his bow and knocked two arrows, quickly firing them off to burrow deep into the inky flesh of an advancing shade. The fact that this man was a mage versed in fire magics struck Ionas with a very real prickling of fear. The scars spidering across the skin of his hands and forearms itched as he released several more arrows, knocking and loosing in rapid fire succession, every one of them striking straight and true. A tiny part of him wondered whether he ought to have been a little less of a shit and remembered to open the door for his companions before leaping into action, but another arc of fire bleached his mind of ever knowing he’d come to Redcliffe with anyone else.

A cold sweat broke out over him and his scars throbbed every time the mage cast. He began to make a silent count of his arrows, being as sparing with them as he could in the off but very likely chance that this would turn out badly for him. There was a very real likelihood that a couple of those arrows may have had the mage’s name written on them and Ionas would prefer to end the fight quickly if it came to that. There was, in fact, an enormously large mahogany barrier between him and any rescue he would have, but with another arrow pulled taut to his ear, he came to realize that it was in fact the shades that were the ones in need of rescue.

The mage fought like he’d been doing this all his life, like it was the most natural thing in the world second only to breathing. He did not rely on casting with the same desperation Ionas had seen fighting the rebel mages at the Hinterland’s crossroads; instead seeming to favor ducking and dodging, twisting and turning with random flourishes of magic to accent his acrobatics. He made the whole endeavor look entirely effortless as he gracefully stayed always just out of reach. The mage swung his staff in a wide arc over his head and around to connect with the shade nearest him with a loud whack that knocked the beast senseless before twisting around to address Ionas.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were coming!” he cried in an accent Ionas could not immediately place. He was grinning as pleasantly as if he were greeting an old friend and standing tall and statuesque, though breathing hard from the exertion of defending himself. “Good of you to show up, now help me close this will you?” 

Ionas was a little more than dumbstruck, but he was only allowed a moment to remain lost in just how bizarre it all was before the tiles in the floor to his left cracked and split open in a sickly green sore, erupting like a geyser and sending the Herald leaping out of the way for his own safety. The mark in his hand sent vicious vibrations coursing up his arm all the way to his shoulder. It reverberated in his bones and he felt sure they were about to splinter as he vaulted the off kilter pews and did his best to stay out of both the demons’ grasp and other end of the mage’s staff every time he whipped the thing around. Ultimately he was thankful for it, but for half a moment Ionas couldn’t imagine why the man wasn’t casting more, but several bolts of lightning arching from the rift quickly had him leaping back to reality and out of their line of fire.

Suddenly a particularly large shade erupted from the floor at his feet and knocked Ionas tumbling backwards onto the cold stone. The demon lunged, claws extended and reaching and Ionas shut his eyes in anticipating of their contact, but it never came. In fact, nothing seemed to happen for a very long moment and Ionas couldn’t justify what he was seeing as he finally thought to peek. The shade was there, still leaping for him, claws outstretched and grasping, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere, not at any real speed anyway. It was caught in an arching field of something shimmering, wavering as it hovered almost frozen in mid air. Ionas scrambled to his feet and stood, slack jawed and staring as his brain struggled to comprehend what in the world he was actually witnessing. 

“That is really not the best place to be standing!” the mage shouted, crossing the room much quicker than Ionas would have thought someone could.

His eyes had shifted to the mage and he was too busy trying to understand what he could possibly have meant to notice that his impending doom was nearly upon him. It was only the rumbling of the creature’s voice coming back to him that saved the Herald, startling him into looking just in time to see the demon phase out of whatever kind of prison it had been caught in to go straight into another of the opposite caliber. Ionas threw himself out of the way without a moment to spare, yelping as the demon sliced through the empty space where he’d been not a moment before at incredible speed only to crash headlong into the floor, shattering the stone tiles and landing in an inky heap. 

The mage was beside him in an instant. “Would you look at that, well done, You,” he remarked with a firm clap to Ionas’s shoulder.

Ionas could hardly breathe. His heart was in his throat. “Did you do that?” he stammered.

The mage was speaking very quickly but Ionas half expected that was not an effect of whatever it was that was currently happening there in the Chantry and just a quirk of the mage’s.

“It’s a bit much to explain and now’s really not the time… Ha! Time. Oh, sorry, I’ll explain in a moment. Now, if you would be so kind.”

“Pardon?”

The mage wiggled his fingers and gestured to the rift for emphasis. “I don’t mean to rush you…”

“Oh! Right.” Ionas turned to address the problem of the rift only to have the looming shadow of yet another one of those enormous shades descend on him. The barrier snapped into place just in time to deflect a ferocious blow that would surely had knocked the Herald’s head spinning on his shoulders. 

 

“Don’t breathe.” The mage caught the demon by the throat, Ionas saw that his hand was clad in a thick dark glove, armored in jointed, steel claws that bit into the shade’s leather flesh and spilled inky blood down the length of a his bared, well muscled arm. He was close enough for Ionas to see his eyes spark just as the demon burst into flames and thrust it back. The mage took a fistful of Ionas’s jerkin then and pulled him around to square him off with the rift. “I’d say it’s now or never.” 

Ionas swallowed hard and shivered as the barrier dissipated, leaving him unarmored in the face of the rift. 

It was larger than most of the ones he had found after sealing the initial breach and Ionas was surprised it had only spat shades out at them.

It growled, almost daring Ionas to try and close it. He snapped his wrist and the anchor sparked. The rift latched onto Ionas like a shackle and chain and wrenched him forward. He grit his teeth against the burning power of the rift and wrapped the tether between himself and the undulating atmospheric tear around his wrist like a rope. It flared and snarled, fighting him for dominance as he asserted his will over the thing, a little easier now than it had been with those first few rifts.

Like the others, it pushed against him with incredible force, flooding Ionas with electric energy as if it meant to overpower him. It burned, like it always did, and Ionas clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. He imagined this would be easier had he any magical ability to speak of. A mage was very probably and decidedly more qualified to close rifts in the fade than a skittish archer from Starkhaven who hardly knew anything of the world beyond save for what he saw in his dreams. But he was the one with the mark, like it or not he would just have to make due as he had. He had to plant his feet to keep them from slipping out from under him as the rift jerked him forward again, but he held his ground.

The sound of rushing wind filled the Chantry once again, crackling and thunderous as the rift itself seemed to shriek, like some kind of hellish tea kettle at the height of its pealing. Just when it felt that his eardrums might burst, Ionas made two more loops on the tether and gave one sharp tug, ripping it from the flesh of the rift and causing it to burst. He flinched and shielded his face against the bits of debris and excess magic the rift cast off as it fizzled and died. Then breathed a shaking sigh as the Chantry fell silent and still once again. 

Ash fell from the ceiling like lazy, blackened snowflakes.

The mage was standing on the other side of the room looking a little more in awe of it all than he really ought to, pale eyes bright and dancing with wonder. “Fantastic! How exactly does that work, if you don’t mind my asking?” 

Ionas was at a little bit of a loss. He’d been so used to having people tell him how they assumed it must work, the work of the Maker, the relationship between the anchor and the rifts themselves, residual traits that had manifested dominantly in the few mages in his family, but he’d never once been asked his opinion on the matter.

It left him slightly dumbfounded. 

“I-I’m not exactly sure.” 

The mage quirked a brow. “Not exactly or not at all?” 

“…Whichever you prefer….”

The mage’s brows came together then over his eyes and after a moment he gave a short laugh, a pleasant sounding thing that set Ionas’s nerves to calming. “That’s delightful! In any case you’re quite talented at it. Honestly, it was a privilege to watch you work.” 

“Ah—hm… thank you.” Ionas certainly had no idea how to respond to such a thing. If he didn’t know any better he might have guessed the mage was flirting with him, which would have made him very nervous indeed. Luckily he’d learned a long time ago to know better, though it hardly made him feel any better.

An awkward silence grew between the two of them and Ionas could hear a muffled, rhythmic thrumming, like the ticking of an enormous clock in the distance, or maybe it was just his own heartbeat. 

He recalled the note and whom had originally handed it to him and came to realize that if this was indeed an intended meeting, they were one party short. 

He cleared his throat. “Err. Sorry… it’s just that….”

“Let me guess, you were expecting Felix?” 

Ionas hesitated a moment before giving a half hearted shrug. 

“Then it seems we share that concern. He was supposed to meet me here after slipping you the note.” 

Ionas opened his mouth to speak, but the ticking turned suddenly to a loud boom that silenced him before he could make a sound.

The telltale sound of splintering wood, a door been knocked off it’s hinges and crashing heavily to the stone floor echoed off the walls, causing the both of them to leap damn near out of their skins, whipping around and readying themselves for another fight. 

“Ionas!” He heard his name roared. 

It was Bull, of course, axe hefted high, sole eye flashing with the light of battle as he lumbered forward over the carcass of the Chantry door, leaving Cassandra standing in the doorway, staring forlornly at the remains of the door, sword and shield at the ready. Sera was fumbling with her lock picks, simultaneously trying to properly sheath them and get hands on her bow.

It would have almost been funny had things not decided to play out as they did. 

The mage swore harshly in a language Ionas couldn’t directly place and staggered back a couple steps at the sight of the enormous qunari advancing, as was only a natural response.

Ionas lifted a steadying hand to the mage and smirked at the Iron Bull, ready to sass him for missing the fight, but his greeting turned into an alarmed yelp in a moment as Ionas realized what was actually happening. He remembered too late that the Iron Bull had spent a great deal of time fighting the war in Seheron and that every mage in Redcliffe now technically owed fealty to the people his own were at war with. Bringing the Bull to Redcliffe had been a mistake and hindsight was always crystal clear.

He abandoned the axe in favor of laying one of those enormous hands on the mage as Ionas tried and failed to put himself in-between the two of them. Before he could take two steps, his former chief had a handful of that fine white material and the mage’s throat and had hauled him off his feet to pin him between an armored fist and the wall.

It became a game of practically scaling the big qunari, clinging to his arm and trying to pry open his hand so he didn’t strangle Ionas’s new friend before he even learned his name. “Bull, stop!” He cried. “He’s on our side!” 

The qunari snarled in response. “He’s one of those Vint assholes.” 

“No, not one of those Vint assholes,” the mage croaked. “I’m with Felix!” 

“Put him down!” 

Ionas was ignored, no matter how he shouted and tried to pry Bull’s fingers open. “Bull!” he shouted. “Listen to me!” 

“What is going on? Who is this man!” Cassandra demanded, coming to stand a little further back from the scene and to her credit sheathing her sword. 

“He’s friendly! He’s the one who sent the note!” Ionas cried, but Bull spoke over him and drowned his voice out. 

“I told you this was a trap,” he said through gritted teeth. “He’s probably with that Alexius prick!” 

“He’s what?!” Sera squawked, she had an arrow knocked in an instant. “I knew this was a bad idea!” 

A moment of terror surged through Ionas as the anchor pulsed. There was magic in the air, the mage’s hands on Bull’s bracer were suddenly white hot and smoking like smelting iron. Those steel claws were biting into stony flesh and Ionas’s heart was hammering in his chest as he took a handful of the Qunari’s harness, tugging sharply on it.

“Listen to me! I’m the Boss here and I’m ordering you to put him down! Now!” 

The last word came out in the closest thing Ionas could muster to a roar. It sliced the air and reverberated through the Chantry, leaving a stunned silence in it’s wake as it faded. 

“Oooh,” he heard Sera murmur, lowering her bow. “He’s in it now, that was his scary Herald voice,” 

Bull hesitated a moment. He glanced between Ionas glaring very pointedly at him and the mage squirming underneath his grip, ready to cast at a moment’s notice, then unceremoniously released him. The tension dissipated in a breath as he slumped to his feet and rubbed a hand over the newly bruised flesh on his neck, coughing and clearing his throat. 

“Well that was exciting,” he rasped. 

“Where you from,  _ Vint _ ?” Bull growled.

It struck an odd chord of exasperation in Ionas.

“Stop with the names, okay, you can’t assume he’s Tevene just because--”

“ _ Minrathous _ .”

“Oh--kay… I stand corrected.”  

Bull grunted his validation and nudged Ionas with a big eblow. 

“So what’s your business, why are we here?” The qunari sniffed.

Cassandra mirrored his suspicion, shifting on her feet as she moved a hand to instinctively to grip the pommel of her sword.

The mage didn’t miss the movement and seemed less than keen to answer, glancing warily up at the qunari before turning to remark to Ionas. “Charming friends you have.”

“I’m sorry,” Ionas said quickly. “They mean well… they’re all good people, this place is just a little…”

“Strange? Bizarre? Off putting? Completely bat-shit crazy?”

“…Exactly…. It has us all a little tense. We’re all very sorry…Bull?”

He growled in response, but a sharp elbow to his side pulled a grunt from the big qunari. “Sorry,” he said through gritted teeth. 

The mage smirked, then shrugged broad, dusky shoulders. “No, no, I understand, the war and everything. I don’t suppose I should have expected any less, then again I didn’t know the Inquisition had swapped the Andrastrian Chantry for the Qun… that might complicate things,” 

“We have done no such thing,” The Seeker said immediately. 

“No? My mistake then.” 

Another one of those long, awkward silences fell over them then, made even worse by the practically tangible storm cloud hovering over Bull’s head and the daggers he was staring at the mage.

Ionas could hardly stand it, he’d only come there in the hope he’d find someone who was very obviously not there, and he was sure Bull was about to start choking the Vint again any moment. 

“So… obviously we’re here for a reason,” He started.

Dorian quirked a brow at him. “Is that obvious? Maybe I just wanted to see you work your magic. Though it’s not magic, which is actually the best part of it all. And here we’ve all been thinking the so-called Herald of Andraste is a mage. But that’s just second nature back home, anyone who can do what you do has got to be a mage, right? Wrong. Mae is going to be so disappointed.” 

Ionas hardly knew who this ‘Mae’ person was, let alone who the man he had so unceremoniously saved was, but somehow he was happy he’d done it and happy to prove everyone back home wrong. Even if home happened to be the big bad land of blood magic and slavery… or so the Chantry said.  

His companions were a little less than immediately enamored with him.

“Right, that’s an awful lot of chit chat from someone who hasn’t even said his name yet,” Sera sniffed. 

The mage quirked a brow at her but didn’t miss a beat. “Getting a little ahead of myself, as usual.” He gave a low sweeping bow “Dorian of House Pavus. How do you do.”

It wasn’t really a question.

Bull made a harsh noise to the Herald’s left. 

“So...are you a Magister?” Ionas asked, feeling foolish for asking in the first place and kicking himself for the way Dorian immediately rolled his eyes.

“Alright,” he sighed, as if it were the most inconvenienced he’d ever been in his life, “I’ll say this once. Yes, I am a mage. Yes, I am from Tevinter. No, I am not a member of the Magisterium, as is the prerequisite to being a Magister. Unlike what you southerners seem to think, Magister is in fact not the Tevene word for Mage. Though I would be surprised if any of you actually knew that. Pleasantly so, but nonetheless surprised.” 

“We’re not stupid,” Sera said immediately. “You don’t have to talk it out like we got no lights on upstairs.” 

Dorian gave a loud bark of that musical laughter again.

“If you were asked the same question by every single person who so much as looked at you again and again with the same kind of vitriolic disdain, you’d be a little sick of it too. I just want to make sure we’re all clear on the matter.”

“Coulda just said no, didn’t have to whip it out and smack us in the face with it,” 

Cassandra made a noise halfway between a cough and a startled yelp. Bull snorted and tried to cover it by clearing his throat. And Ionas hoped no one noticed the slight tinge to his cheeks as he extended his hand and gave the mage’s a good, firm shake. 

“My name’s Ionas. Trevelyan. This is Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast, Sera, and the Iron Bull. We’re with--”

Dorian didn’t let him finish. “With the Inquisition, yes I know. Its business is what has brought you to Redcliffe in the first place, the same as myself. I had hoped Felix would be here to help me explain but I suppose we might end up waiting on him forever if we don’t get right down to it… I’m afraid I need your help.”

  
  
  



End file.
